More, I knew that
the eight traitors that the corpse-washer had named were not the only
ones. There were more of such people, and they were on the
premises as well. I heard steps, these coming softly from out in the
hall; then a faint tapping at the door. I myself – I would not let
Hendrik risk his life by answering the door now; the only people who
were up to that task were those willing to kill whoever
they saw in front of them without the slightest hesitation –
went to the door, and I opened it a crack, sword in hand and
full-ready to run amok and kill whoever or whatever was outside the
door.

It was the shorter
guard, and thankfully, he did have one of the guard-muskets in
hand. He motioned with the barrel of his mounted weapon, and one by
one, their hands tied behind them with coarse 'string', those eight
people the corpse-washer had named were marched in. The shorter
guard was the first man inside as he backed into the room, his gun
shouldered and finger on the trigger, hammer at full cock, ready to
fire.

“Where?” he
asked. He did not take his eyes off of the people he was aiming at.
For once he was doing the right thing.

“Against that
wall over there,” I said, as I pointed at the place in question
with my sword. “That stretch of it which I've already marked with
blood will serve.”

As the eight were
lined up, I began wiping down my sword. Long strokes of a dampened
rag, keeping my hands clear of its edge, then a light coating of oil
from my oil rag. I then sheathed it – and then looked at these
people.

I was blind to the
expressions upon their faces, and now I had neither care nor worry
about the matter. I had questions; they would answer them; and then,
they would die. At this last thought, a growl, much like that of a
huge and infuriated version of a long-haired cat, came from my mouth.

“Now, there will
be questions.” My voice was simultaneously quiet and echoing, with
a barely-suppressed fury that was beyond the capacity of language to
describe. “There are more than eight of you people.” A
pause for some reason, perhaps emphasis. “I know there are
more traitors than those I see here.”

Here, I paused
again, and the fury began to show its claws in my voice. It wanted
to be turned loose so that it could rip them apart like a raging
jungle beast, and holding it in check was no longer a thing I wanted
to do.

“Do not think
to lie to me,” I growled. “Now, answers. One at a time, you
fools – and do not think that I have patience enough to endure
anything less than you telling me exactly and in precise detail
the very things that I wish to hear. I have little patience with
fools, and none whatsoever with traitors like you.”

I began stalking the line, and as I
did, the expressions I saw were a mystery – until I saw the face of
the man I had healed earlier some eight feet away. I sprang, then
landed and turned such that in an eyeblink of time the tip of my
sword was drawing blood from just under his chin.

“Names, fool!” I screamed. “This
is a hungry sword, and it seeks your life!”

He choked, stammered a second or two –
and then, one at a time, my sword prodding him when he slowed in his
naming or made choking noises, he named another full coven's worth of
Judas-witch-murderer-traitors. When he finished, I somehow sensed
that he had named all of the 'purchased' traitors in this
particular batch.

There were others, but they
were not purchased; more, they were not native to this region.
I wanted to know about them,
and now, I would resume my work – and I would not stop until I'd
finished sending every living soul involved in this particular
treasonous mess to hell where they belonged.

I
walked over to the tools, sword still out and waving about slightly,
much as if it was truly a hungry sword and desired the blood of
evildoers, and looked them over. Suddenly, I found a sizable pair of
nippers. I picked them up, admiring their workmanship, noticing the
Machalaat Brothers imprint upon their handles, as well as their
sizable and well-rounded bolt-heads. They would serve.

I walked back
toward the traitor-line, now having but some vague idea as to what
next to do, but still wondering slightly. My sword waved, its tip
moving side to side like the nose of a hunting dog, and as I slowly
stalked down the line, starting at the person nearest the door, I
wondered just what I was looking for.

I could wonder
that much, if not much more. Most of the questions I normally
had were gone.

As I walked, I
knew that my mere presence would 'flush' the thing I was after –
and when one of these people averted his gaze, I knew.

Like lightning.

I was in his face
nearly as fast, the pincers in my right hand and the sword in my
left, now conscious of the fact that I was all but ambidextrous when
like this and that I could swap things between my hands without
thinking or looking. More, I knew the issue, that being an object
lesson; and because traitors were witches – there was not
the slightest shred of doubt in my mind now – they were not
human. They had renounced that status so as to become
followers of Brimstone.

Witke was a neuter
noun. It wasn't a pronoun, as those were used for people or animals.
Neuter nouns, especially strong neuter nouns like witke,
described objects. I needed an object lesson – and
here, I had found the object that I needed to perform that
lesson.

I swapped the things in my hands
again, then yet again for some reason, this literally too fast to
follow with eye or mind, and I sheathed my sword as I lunged at the
traitor in question. I grabbed his throat, my left hand like the
hooked claws of an enraged black rooster and as strong as death, and
with my right hand, I grabbed his nose with the nippers.

The wide portions of these things –
where the cutting edges were – were touching the corner of his eyes
and the bottom of his nose. I squeezed them but slightly, getting a
firmer grip on the handles. I had a question for this fool, and it
was an integral portion of the lesson I was going to impart.

“I wonder how you will look when
your skull is rotting on a pole, you stinking maggot!” I spat. My
voice then changed utterly, this to an insane-sounding and much
louder howl. “Answer me!”

“Why?” he squeaked, his voice a
high-pitched falsetto whining.

My hand tightened, and as my grip on
the pincers slowly closed, the sound made by the crunching of the
bones of his nose were only exceeded by his agonized screams; and
when the blades of the nippers met, I yanked back hard with a sudden
tearing sound – and where his nose once had been, there was now a
blood-gushing hole in his face and a hunk of meat in the 'teeth' of
the nippers. With my left hand, I slammed him hard against the wall
such that he struck it with a ringing crack that sifted down dust
upon his head, then as I shook his torn-off nose out of the nippers'
jaws, I looked idly at the others with what could only be
called an evil leering grin. A soft thud came to my ears from below,
and without looking down, I ground the man's mangled nose underfoot.

The mess I made was not
important. My point was, and the answers I wanted to hear were more
important yet.

“I got an answer for your 'why',
fool,” I spat. “I did that because my inclination of the
moment was to rip your nose off, you stinking witch! Curse your
Brimstone-loving eyes, where is your damned-to-hell-and-gone coven!”

I paused, this for a second, to let
what I had said sink into their witchcraft-infested minds. That
educated – no, it informed – what I next said.

“All of you people are witches,” I
growled, “and that reptile you call 'Father Brimstone' is your
lord, your master, and your 'beloved protector'.” A second's
pause. “You'll be wishing that thing was chewing on you with its
spiky teeth before I am done with sending you to hell.” Another
pause, this one pregnant with possibility – then a sudden deafening
scream:

“Tell me what I want to know!”

I was interrupted, this time by faint
tapping – and again, the shorter guard came in first, musket
shouldered, hammer full-cocked, finger on the trigger, ready to fire
at the slightest provocation. One by one, the other traitors were
led in, each one with hands tied behind the back, this done with
coarse 'string', and as I pointed to where they belonged – my sword
was once more out, it being the best pointer I had – they were
thrown against the wall by the taller guard. I wondered for a moment
how otherwise the taller guard was managing to remain 'ready for
business', at least until I saw one of the other guard-muskets slung
over his shoulder by a leather strap, the hammer half-cocked but
otherwise ready to fire.

About halfway though the process of
leading in the traitors, however, the one witch whose nose I had
removed whimpered, then softly moaned.

My anger exploded;
and in a single bound, I shot bodily through the line of traitors,
brutally elbowing them aside as I passed and cutting one of them
slightly with my sword as I flew past them, then I landed upon my
right foot and threw a roundhouse kick – with the left foot this
time – at the man's chest. I'd done it just like I'd been taught
long ago in the Dojo – and again, I was using both feet as I
had been taught in class.

Only this time, I kicked with the
precise and exact goal of killing, not 'teaching' as I had
done before; and there was nothing of gentleness remaining in
either my heart or my mind. I put the 'pad' of my foot through
the 'xyphoid process', where the brittle arrow-shaped cartilage would
sheer off the bones of his sternum and rip his liver to shreds as it
shot through it to then hole the top of his stomach – and finally,
that hard piece of cartilage would tear his aorta open. He'd die
quickly – but his death would be terribly painful.

I wanted that precise end for
this man. The only possible improvements would be to let him hurt
more and die somewhat slower.

The sound of the impact was a sudden
'snap' followed by an 'ugh' as the man struck the wall that seemed to
shake my mind as well as the foundation of the building, but the
blood that suddenly welled up in his throat turned into a deep red
foaming geyser as he collapsed in place, knees buckling, much as if
he'd been shot with a cannonball. He thrashed as he lay face-down,
his moans near-silenced by his copious bleeding, then as he bled out,
he ceased moving – and with a slow and rattling last breath that
took what seemed a slow count of ten, he died within less than a
minute after I'd kicked him.

His death did not affect the resolve
of the remaining traitors in the slightest, and it seemed my
savagery thus far had been of no use. I took out my knife, this
small bright thing with but three inches of razor sharp blade – and
while the witches remained stone-faced to my unfeeling gaze, I could
feel their derision at its small size – until I slashed the
clothing of the first one I encountered, and when he yelped, I
stabbed him low in the gut.

Several times, just like the sting of
an angry wasp, and quicker than the needle of a sewing machine –
and by the smell that came up from the slow-bleeding punctures I'd
made, I'd perforated his large intestine.

I left him behind me, and sliced the
next witch's clothing open, much as if I were a mythical masked
avenger that enjoyed turning witch-rags into just plain rags.
If I saw any sign of pain; of objection to what I was doing; a
downturned gaze that would not meet my savage and staring life-hunger
– the knife would find a spot, or often several – and rapid-fire,
I would plunge it in to the hilt and then withdraw it to stab again
as the person I attacked either held his tongue in complete silence
or screamed like a damned soul.

Screaming made the stabbing continue
until that noise ceased, while 'silence' satisfied me with a few
pokes – these generally in areas that did not have major blood
vessels or 'vital' structures. I wanted my victims to suffer
as much as possible before I killed them. I knew that much;
I wanted their faces to show plainly the wages of sin when their
heads roosted upon poles to rot.

The two guards left the room when the
last of the traitors were brought in and forced into the line. I
counted twenty-four of them in total, including the beheaded corpse
and the man I had just killed. All of them were bloodstained now,
most of them were covered with blood – and upon seeing that blood,
I had an impression.

“This is a plot, a treason-plot, and
all of you fools are traitors – among other things, witches
included.” I paused, then laughed, my laugh high-pitched,
insane-sounding and ringingly loud, and as I stopped laughing, I saw
definite traces of emotion – fear, most likely – show upon
several faces. No matter: I understood their thoughts completely
to the small degree necessary to do my job.

They were dealing with a maniac,
someone just like those ancient people of the time between the war
and the curse who blew horns – and who then killed without stopping
for aught until either they died or they stood on the field of battle
alone. Those people lived for but one thing: killing
traitors, witches, and evildoers of one kind or another; and their
Baresark savagery made a name for them, and those who were like them
in latter days.

All of these old 'horn-blowers'
happened to be marked, also; and many of them had markings that could
not be hid by clothing. Those with markings that were impossible to
hide were the most savage in battle; and when they blew
horns, there was but one thing that was going to happen for certain:
all of the witches in
the area would die. I thought their
speech would be appropriate, so I said that next.

“I enjoy ending
traitors,” I said in a husky whisper, “and I hunger for their
lives. Those who are stupid enough to play that game with me
shall sup with Brimstone, and by the time I am done with my
killing, you will wish for the teeth of that reptile, and that with a
longing too great for words.”

I paused, then
cleaned my knife with a rag. I had other ideas that I wanted to try,
but first, more news for these people:

“Now, all of you
– you are in league, this one with another, and all of you sold
yourselves – first to Brimstone, which is a given for traitors,
which makes you witches; and then to another, this being a person or
a group of them.” A pause, then a deafening scream: “who bought
you!”

One of the first people I had worked
over with my knife moaned faintly as he tried to stanch the
slow-dripping flow of blood from the half-dozen small punctures in
his lower abdomen I had made with my knife. I leaped – somehow, I
managed an easy fifteen feet – to land like a cat right in front of
him. My knife was out, its small bloody blade working like a
reddened bolt of lighting to make ready, then I slammed him into the
wall with my free hand and stunned him, grabbed his head by the
blood-sopping hair – and then with his head locked solid in
my left arm, I poked my knife into his right eye socket and made a
scooping motion that flung his cut-free eyelid up and onto his hair
and jerked his eye out its socket to dangle on his cheek by the optic
nerve.

And then, while still 'locked' in my
arm, I somehow twisted about him and kneed him in the groin.

I turned loose of his head, and as he
doubled up and began retching, I grabbed his hair and yanked up and
back hard enough to hear some of it rip out by the roots. I doubled
him up the other way, such that his eye laid upon his face like a
poached egg, still hanging by the optic nerve, his head now bent
backward. Holding my knife firmly, butt end down, I began bashing
his mouth such that his shattered teeth flew like white icy fragments
amid droplets of blood, then reversed it with a sudden flip, and with
two ragged slices, I cut away his lips at the gum-lines. I poked the
eye itself with the tip of my knife, then rammed it into his gagging
mouth – and then hauled him up straight by his hair, my knife at
his throat so as to cut it if he did not do exactly as I said.
I had words for this man.

“Swallow it!” I screamed. “No
chewing! Swallow it whole!” My voice dropped in pitch and volume,
the knife still at his throat as he began 'working' on getting it
down. I then saw the optic nerve holding his eye back; and I cut
that, then had my knife back to his throat in an instant. He was
still 'working'; and as I now realized, on trying not to
swallow his own eye.

“If you do not swallow that eye,
fool,” I snarled as I poked him in the throat with my knife to draw
blood, “you will wish that you had read my mind to a perfection,
just like all witches are supposed to do with those who own them –
and then ripped out both of your eyes with your bare hands and
gobbled them like the pig you are, and that done such that I am well
pleased!”

I now began sawing on his throat with
the knife, and after a little blood flowed to stain his clothing
further, he swallowed his own eye. I wiped my knife off on his
clothing such that it was relatively clean; and then, with no warning
whatsoever, I grabbed him by the throat with my free hand and flung
him hard against the wall where he hit flat against it with a
snapping crackle.

I was 'tired' of their rubbish; and I
knew that witches responded to certain key phrases, if I went
by what I had been told.

Once more, I began stalking back and
forth, relentless, a wild animal on the prowl, hungry for prey. I
put my knife away, and drew my sword. An expression seemed to flash
for an instant across a few of their bloodstained faces, and I then
knew that witch-spewed nonsense about swords being 'a matter of
power' was believed wholeheartedly – at least by witches, or those
who thought like them.

It was believed enough, I realized,
that I could use the lies that they had believed about swords
and the like to destroy them – or rather, I could use it to destroy
this particular batch.

“I like killing traitors,” I said
in a deceptively soft voice, “and I shall enjoy hearing your
screams as I cut you apart, slowly and deliberately, so as to make
you ready for the smoke and the flames of hell. I will then take
your heads, and put upon those very same heads expressions that
delight me. I will laugh with great pleasure as I hear your voices,
those coming from the bottom of the pit of hell, beseeching your
beloved protector as he enjoys with relish the latest meals I have
sent him.”

Here, I paused. There was more to
this than the obvious, that being what I saw before me; and I could
'feel' this in my 'bones'. This plot involved Ultima Thule at some
level, and I spoke of that next.

“I cannot wait until I can catch
that stupid fat witch that runs Norden,” I said, “and then rip
her apart with my bare hands while she begs me to have mercy upon
her. She shall receive none of that from me, and neither will you
people. Now, but one question more: did that witch that rules Norden
buy you?”

A soft moan, this coming from the far
end of the line; then a single croaked word. It was the signal I had
been waiting for, and hearing the word 'yes' caused the fury within
me to finally claw its way free of what few restraints that yet
remained upon it. It did this in the time it took me to run to the
man who had spoken, who was now clutching at his knife-ripped belly.

I slapped his face up with my left
hand, pivoted on my left foot – and then, just like I had been
trained all those many years ago, my right hand formed 'the fist of
iron', and I crushed his larynx with a hammer-strike to the neck as
I swung through his neck and into the very wall itself.

Lessons imparted to children tended to
be retained better than those learned later, and though my time at
the Dojo had been brief, nearly all of what I had learned there had
indeed been retained. It was working here, just like the
'Instructor' – I could not recall his formal title; that place
wasn't as formal as some martial arts places I'd heard of – had
said it would.

His choking sounds as he slowly slid
down the wall spoke of his going nowhere save to hell, and that
quickly. Off to my left, movement in my peripheral vision spoke of
another traitor assaying escape, this by crawling – I saw this as I
turned in that direction – and then three steps and a spring to
turn about in mid-air had me land in a crouch in directly front of
him with a soft thud.

He'd wondered what his worst nightmare
would be. He was now seeing it snarling in front of him, and with a
voice dripping with sarcasm, I murmured, “trying to go somewhere,
you snake-spawned son of the devil? Or is that 'slither off' –
because you're lower than a stinking goo-spewing Desmond?”

I did not wait for an answer; I
stomped his chest down to the ground such that he grunted in pain,
unsheathed my sword, then deliberately, with great 'delicacy', sliced
both of the thick tendons at the very back of his ankles. He would
never walk again, I knew, and that meant no escape, either from me or
what I had planned for him.

It also meant tremendous screaming as
his feet 'cranked up' and locked forward into full tension from the
muscles on the front sides of his calves. I kicked him in the head
to silence him, then let him lay there in the slow-growing pool of
his blood. My voice then rang out, a commanding shrill-sounding howl
demanding death and destruction. I almost wanted to chant an old
translation of a Zulu war-cry I had read somewhere far back in the
past: “What is the lot of man born of woman? Death! Death!”

And when I asked the question –
“what is commonly done to traitors such as these?” – I heard
Hendrik speak much the same words as that war-cry.

“Death is the usual,” he said,
“though you seem to be doing it in a manner I've but vaguely
understood before now.” A a pause to drink, then, “all of these
men are outlawed to the ultimate degree as of my speaking of it, and
I suspect you know that means a large number of sizable
burn-piles. I'll light some of them myself, most likely.”

“I took down
those instructions as well,” said Hendrick, “and that
shall be the first of those things to happen.”

“Instructions?”
I asked. “Heads spiked on poles, bodies bagged, labels of treason
and witchcraft attached, and public display in the sundry cross-roads
of the kingdom house until they fall rotten of their own accord?”

“That and much
more,” said Hendrik. “You also spoke of the possibility there
might be more traitors, only not of our people, and I've called for
the huntsmen, what of them there are on the premises. They are the
quietest people we have who do not wear greens, and though they use
bows and arrows, I've never seen one of them miss his target. Not
once.”

Again, I spoke:
“such mute witnesses as these who will hang in the streets of the
town shall be a warning and a sign, and educate them who think to do
evil as these people have. There will be no traitors here,
and to think of such evil is fully as bad as to actually perform it.”

Once more, I noted with a sense of
grimness and more than a trace of satisfaction, that there were no
suspicions whatsoever in my mind. There were crimes,
these needing punishment; some criminals hid those crimes better than
others, much as these people had done. In all cases, these crimes –
even those thought trivial by the people of the area – were
of such monstrous nature in the eyes of the great Judge who we were
supposed to worship that no temporal punishment...

“No matter how bloody, no
matter how brutal, no matter how cruel,” I spoke
softly.

Was even close to being
sufficient recompense. Only one action was, and that was death,
followed by divine judgment; and after that was rendered unto
the guilty, eternal repose in that place which Dante had called
Inferno. That, and that only, was the sole answer for those
persons who did evil.

And as if I had spoken all of this
from a pulpit high within the rarefied air of a cathedral, Hendrik
intoned, “today is indeed the day of retribution, and all that you
have said is writ upon tapestries and in many of the tales in the
Grim Collection.”

I could feel something about to
happen, so much so that with the blade of my sword I rapidly walked
past the line of traitors, letting the tip of the blade slice
clothing, skin and muscle until I came to the end of the line of the
twenty or so who still stood. Several had collapsed face-down upon
the floor in addition to those I had killed with fist or blade, and
as I came to the door, I heard a brief scuffle outside. I came to
the door and stood, waiting, expecting to hear the roaring of
muskets.

None came.

Instead, the door swung open, its
movement rapid and sure, and when I saw the barrel of a musket come
in – one that I had not worked on, most likely, for it had no
barrel bands – I kicked the thing up so hard that it flew into a
vertical position and past that to strike the head of the man aiming
it. With a shrill scream, he began to crumple forward; as I saw him
fall into the doorway, I swung at his neck with a whistling strike
that removed his head and sprayed blood and gore halfway across the
room as I grabbed the man's musket before it could fall to the floor.

I had felt no shock or other unusual
sensations in my hand when I decapitated this second assassin, and I
was glad Hendrik was not at his desk. He would have been
showered with blood otherwise; and when he returned to his desk a
moment later, he wiped his face with his hand at the new mess
I had made.

I then set my sword upon his
blood-splattered desk, and flipped up the frizzen of the musket and
dumped the powder on the still-bleeding corpse. I faced the gun
downward, such that its muzzle was almost touching the dead man's
body, pulled the trigger – and now satisfied of the matter, I
retrieved my sword and put the musket over in the nearest corner of
the room, well clear of the door.

I then went outside.

There was but one guard present, and
no guard-muskets anywhere nearby. More, the guard was holding his
head in his hands, and by the blood in his hair, someone had thumped
him hard enough to stun him at the very least.

I did not care for his injury.
I had but two questions, and I could barely restrain myself or my
rage: the first being: why wasn't this section of the hall awash
in blood and mounded with body parts, with the stink of burnt powder
and death lingering in the air? And
the second: why wasn't his clothing sticky and clotted with
the blood and gore of enemies, his face blood-spattered, his eyes
blood-caked, his hands dripping with blood – just like mine?

“S-some black-dressed stranger took
him by the arm to help with something,” he said – and then he
spat not merely blood, but the fragment of a tooth to land upon the
floor with a faint rattling sound.

By some strange reason, I managed to
retain a small measure
of self-control.

“The guard-muskets?” I asked.
“Where are they?”

“W-we put them b-back, as...”

“No!” I screamed, my voice rising
in pitch and volume such that my ears rang anew. “You stinking
fool, you should have shot that black-dressed wretch!”

I glanced at General's Row, then knew
beyond all doubt: no current 'General' had anywhere close
to the audacity to do what had just been done. This was
someone else entirely; and the same for domestic witches. They'd
gotten the fear so bad they'd not counted themselves close
to safe until they were within smelling distance of the sea to the
west, or a day's hard ride – on the back of a stinky mule
ridden to the point of foundering, no less – to the east of the
Main. The same distances, roughly, applied to both north and south.
Anything less, and they knew themselves to be in dire danger, with
the threat of instant death looming unseen over them like the
all-knowing and omnipresent sword of Damocles.

“Go fetch those muskets,” I said.
“I want you to get all three of them, as well as those
things needed to load them – and the first person who you suspect,
even the least bit, put some soot on that wretch and then beat him
into a red mush!” A pause, then in a low and malevolent voice, I
said, “I've already killed several traitors in there, and when that
wretch returns here, I'll kill him also.” I then slammed the door
with a shuddering bang.

And as the lock clicked under my hand,
I thought – “Hendrik. Maria. This place is far too dangerous
for them. They need to be elsewhere.”

And in my rapid-spinning mind,
instantly I knew where: Room 67. The room I used. I knew it
like the back of my hand, and when I looked down, I had the
disk to it in my hand.

I banged the door open with a sudden
rush of air that saw the man running back to the bench with an
armload of guns. I shook my head as I counted but two weapons and no
loading gear, then waited for him – and when he arrived breathless,
I said in a harsh voice, “I want this to happen. You will fetch
all of those guard-muskets, and retrieve their powder
measures, their bags of shot, and their tins of caps, and then lead
the king and queen to one of the guard rooms.” Here, I handed him
the disk. “I want them in this room. I stay there at
times, and I know it's safe. Should you take them anywhere
else...”

He gulped.

“Good that you understand me, then,”
I spat. The fury I felt was showing clearly. “I will make
the arrangements inside.” A pause, then, “the password is
'keyhole'. Now repeat to me what I told you word-for-word, so
I can have some assurance that you will not fail in any
particulars – and by doing so, become a traitor to your God and
your king.”

I looked down at my sword as he began
to haltingly repeat back what I had told him, and as I heard his slow
and hesitant words, I saw that my blood-caked hand was white-knuckle
tight on the grip of my sword. I had no patience left with either
of these men, and the slightest mistake on either of their parts
would have me break them both down and then add them to the
list of traitors; for their failures were far beyond excuse in my
mind, and their lazy demeanor, their slack attitudes, and their
overwhelming negligence added up to but one thing only in my mind:

Treason, and that of the rankest
species. I was at the sword-edged point of killing the man in front
of me right now, I realized, and only as he finished his recitation –
he got the high points passably, even if he could not manage
it word for word due to his obvious inattention to my commands
– could I relax a trifle. I closed the door, this time gently; I
then turned to see Hendrik. Where he had hidden himself during the
last few 'minutes' was a mystery, but he had his fowling piece and
'bag' – and to my surprise, while I had known Maria to have a
fowling piece, she had a bag of similar nature as well as the gun
spoken of. I presumed she had her 'gun equipment' in there. I did
not need to presume about Hendrik's bag; I'd seen what he kept inside
it more than once during the trip south and back.

I wiped my forehead, then looked at my
palm. Amid the grime and the blood, I saw a river of dirty sweat. I
thought for a moment, shook my head, then looked at them. It was
time to speak.

“At least part of this mess is
working out passably, even if everything else has gone to hell,” I
said in a 'gravel-voice'. “Did you hear what I told those two
men?”

“That is a very good idea,” said
Maria. “This is not common.”

“I wish I could say that about pigs,
madame, but we've seen too many of those stinking things in
the area lately,” I said gravely. I turned toward the door, then
heard the frantic running arrival of the other guard, then what
sounded like an argument. I opened the door, and as the taller man
handed the other one of the muskets, I noted the shorter guard's
ripped clothing, as well as a bloodstained patch on his side. I
said, “no, not now. You've got work to do. Let that trouble take
care of itself.”

I closed the door, then told the king
and queen, “they're both out there. Room 67, where I sleep. Go
with God, be wary, and stay safe. The password is 'keyhole' – and
if either man should open that door to any other word, or for any
reason otherwise, kill both of them and prepare to do battle.”

I opened the door, then watched the
two guards walk with Hendrik and Maria between them. All of them now
had cocked and loaded weapons, or so I suspected, and as I closed the
door, I thought, “now I am most glad we have another crew
coming on duty soon, and I hope everyone in here now knows why
we need to have an overlap of guards during the time when one post
ends and another begins, especially during the mid-day postings.”
A pause, then, “and if this nonsense gets anything close to common,
that's going to be the rule here.”

I then turned to see the line of
traitors. Most of these men now slumped against the wall save for
two more who had keeled over and lay facedown in slow-growing pools
of blood. I was now alone with these men, but as I looked them over,
I saw that someone – who was a good question – had tied
their feet most expertly with more thin 'twine'. I suspected this
would do well enough, especially when I felt one set of ankles on one
of the fallen and found the knots firm and holding. I then left the
traitor-line, found the stool that Thomas had used, set it down in
the 'shadow' of Hendrik's desk, and sat down to wipe my sword, first
with spit-soaked rags and then oil while waiting for this
'black-dressed person' amid the thick and cloying scent of blood,
body fluids, urine, and dung.

Within a minute, however, I'd found
some water, and as I began 'scrubbing' my sword, questions and
hypotheses went through my mind. Firstly, the black-dressed person
was both the most intelligent person of the lot by far and
the leader of the entire plot. Secondly, one question was followed
swiftly by another: was this man from Norden? Was he one of their
Thinkers?

Steps, these at first faint, came
slowly up to the door. The one making them was cautious, much as a
hunted rat might be, or so I thought as I stood and came to the side
of the door nearest its doorknob, there to stand, sword in hand,
ready to strike. The steps grew louder; I waited. Suddenly, without
no tapping, the door banged open as if the person opening it owned
the place and all its contents, and as I looked this man over in an
eyeblink of time, I knew beyond all
doubt that the only
thing familiar about him was the fact that he had gotten the raw
cloth of what he was wearing from somewhere on the continent. All
else about his clothing – and indeed, he himself – seemed
utterly foreign, much as if I were not seeing cloth taken from Sam
Brumm's body and remade to fit another thug, but something and
someone coming from a place neither here nor where I came from, with
a distinct 'alien' aspect too strong to ignore and too strange to
really describe.

He stood, looking,
transfixed at the bloodstains upon Hendrik's desk; then as he turned
to his left, I leaped forward, my sword-tip finding his throat in an
instant. I knew now beyond all knowledge and all reason that he
owned this group of people, much as he owned his clothing and
those other objects at his considerable disposal.

He stopped in
mid-stride; and with consuming interest, I scanned his face, much as
if I wished to commit to memory all the details of his alien kind:
lips at once wide-spreading and thin, with a hint of jagged blackened
teeth showing from behind their near-paper thinness; a nose, long,
pendulous and somewhat crooked near where it joined his massive and
overhanging uneven brows; close-set beady black eyes; finally, a
forehead so large and lumpy it dominated his face. He reached toward
his unbuttoned cloak pocket with his right hand.

I said nothing. I swung as he
reached, and his hand and three inches of arm joined by the wrist
fell to flop dully upon the floor. Blood followed it down from his
arm in a steady and growing dribble.

He grimaced in what might have been
shock or pain, then said, his voice strangely accented, “I will pay
you...”

His stupid proposition did not
interest me at all, and I screamed, drowning out his speech;
and as I screamed, I swung on his neck with all I had to send his
head flying and his corpse falling slow to the floor fountaining
blood as it fell. Yet still I screamed, this earsplittingly loud and
agonizingly high-pitched:

“I was bought with a price too high
to reckon in mere money, and you think you can buy me,
fool? You can sup with Brimstone where you belong, you
curse-spitting witch!”

A tap at the door, then Karl's voice:
“what gives in there?” Karl did not wait for me to reply, for
now I was speechless; then as he cautiously opened the door and poked
his head in to look upon the pooling blood surrounding my latest
victim, I managed to finally
find my now thick-clotted tongue.

“Can you f-find
some r-rope,” I asked weakly, as I reached into my possible bag for
some honey. I felt as if I might faint. “We have work to do
outside.”

Karl closed the
door, this slowly; and as the lock clicked, I found myself once again
in the room with the dead and the dying. My hands closed upon a
honey-vial, and I got down a slurp, then I began looking for a jug of
beer. I found one, this one part-full and splattered with blood, and
I wiped it off carefully with a spit-dampened rag prior to filling my
cup. I drained cup after cup, and after I'd gotten five of them
down, only then did I realize where I actually was. I looked down to
see blood on the floor, then at the walls...

“Blood there,
too,” I thought. “No matter. They have cleaners here that do
walls decently, or so it seems.” A tap came at the door, and I
walked slowly toward it with my sword to the side. It was Karl, and
he had several coils of old-looking yet 'decent' rope. I felt it,
then thought for a second.

“I have an idea
regarding these wretched traitors,” I murmured.

Karl looked
around, the door to the office still ajar. He came to one, nudged
him with his foot, then looked further. “I think some of these
people are dead. Is this idea about those of them that are alive?”

“Yes,” I said.
“Firstly, other than those without their heads, and possibly
three others, these people are alive. They might be playing
dead, but they are alive – which means my questions, and
their answers.” A pause, then, “should they die in the process,
no loss. They just die a little sooner than they would otherwise.”

And as we set to
work after explaining what I wanted, I said, “grandmother's knots,
Karl. I'm glad yours hold.”

I cleaned my sword
again, this time first with water, then with the oil-rag. The latter
was becoming bloodstained, and as I sheathed the blade, Karl said,
“now who used this fishing string here?”

“I had some,”
I said.

“I doubt you had
that much,” said Karl. “Sarah told me she put about twenty paces
in that bag you have, but not much more.” Karl then looked around
as he tied the feet of one of the traitors, then asked, “did you
have help with this?”

“No, and I
wished heartily that I did,” I spat. “Those other people...”

“They ran off,
didn't they?” he said. “Didn't want to do the hall, so when
these...”

A glint of brass
showed, and I was about to 'launch' when Karl drew his knife and held
it to the man's throat. I could see no little blood flowing onto his
blade. “I will cut your throat, wretch. Just give me an excuse,
anything at all, fool, and I will take your head and plant it
myself!”

“I wish they had
had that attitude,” I muttered, as the man Karl was working
on put his hands out where Karl could tie them up. He then reached
into the pocket in question, and drew out a 'court jester' pistol.

“One of those
stinkers, eh?” I muttered. “If there's one, then I bet there are
more of those things. I'd best start searching pockets.”

I began doing so,
but as Karl continued tying knots 'fit for his grandmother', I saw
another such brassy glint show with suddenness. I launched into
mid-air, leaping over Karl's back to clear it by nearly two feet, and
as the glint slowly became another pistol of the type Karl had just
retrieved, I landed on the man's back with a snapping crackle with my
right knee down and my entire weight bearing upon it. This
bone-crushing kill-strike was not something I had
learned in the Dojo.

“What did you
do?” he said. “I heard bones break.”

I reached into the
blood-coughing man's pockets – I'd busted more than his ribs;
nothing was working from the waist down on this man now – and drew
out another pistol, much as the one Karl had found first.

Karl looked around
once more, then said, “now I know why none of these people tried to
go anywhere.”

“Why?” I
asked. I was totally mystified. These people had shown themselves
to be disgustingly 'tough' regarding injuries, or so I thought.
'Obdurate' did not come close to adequately describing their
behavior.

“They're hurt
too bad to move,” said Karl. “What were you doing,
thumping them with a club like Georg is said to use on swine?”

I shook my head,
then said, “I leaped from the other side of you, over there” –
there, I pointed at the place nearly fifteen feet away – “and I
flew over you and landed where I am now – and I landed with my knee
downward, and that with the goal of killing my target.”

“He is not
dead,” said Karl matter-of-factly, “though if you have been doing
things like that, I am surprised any of these people are still
alive.” He then turned the man he'd been roping over.

“This wretch
should be dead,” said Karl. “He might live a day if Anna were
here to look after him close, as he's cut up bad. Now who was
stabbing him?”

“I was,” I
said. “These people were so infernally disinclined to talk that
I...”

I stood, seeing a
third brass glint – and I leaped and then kicked the head of the
man who was showing it. I removed another of those accursed
four-shooting court-jester pistols – and with that, I started at
one end of the 'line' of traitors and began slitting pockets with my
knife, then rifling everything out of them to gather it into a
mound of 'stuff' on the floor near the bookcases. Thankfully, those
as of yet showed little blood.

“Four more of
those stinking pistols,” I muttered, “three bad knives that
aren't much bigger than mine...”

“There was this
one wretch with one eye,” said Karl, “and no teeth. What
happened to him?”

“I busted out
his teeth and made him swallow his own eyeball,” I said flatly.
“I've only begun with these people, though – they've not
been giving me the answers that I want to hear.”

Between Karl and
I, it took nearly half an hour to remove their 'strings' and then
rope-together the hands of those traitors that yet remained alive –
and during that time, on multiple occasions, a traitor that had at
first seemed 'dead' to Karl not only proved to be very much alive,
but also inclined to fight our efforts. I usually kicked
those that resisted in the head, though in one instance, one wormed
out a 'shiv' that I had somehow missed in my searching of pockets.

I threw my
rat-club at him, this
unthinkingly and with rifle-like accuracy.

The club bounced
off of his arm with a bone-snapping crack, then narrowly missed Karl
as it flew over him to hit the floor near the far wall. He looked at
me, then at the rat-club, then resumed working. I admired his
stolidity, even if I did not admire the witch who had been trying to
poke me with his 'shiv'. I looked closer at the 'poker', and then
took it to Karl.

“That is a bad
awl with a handle that has been whittled down,” he said. “Lukas
said witches used things like that to poke each other and people they
wanted to rob.” Karl then asked me, “now how is it you kick like
an angry mule in common shoes?”

“I'm not exactly
sure, other than some very brief training I had had as a boy,
perhaps,” I said. “I'm not sure if that's it, actually – it
might be something entirely otherwise, now that I think about it.”
I then paused before asking a question.

“Can the dead
ones be brought out back also?” I asked. “There's something I
need to do there.”

When Karl left
after checking the ropes, I began kicking these roped-together people
to their feet. There, I 'linked them up' with the two remaining
coils of rope: each of these people, save for the very last in line,
had a hangman's knot about his neck going to the waist of the traitor
in line behind him, while the first man had no knot for his waist.
I'd stabbed him low in the back three times on each side to make up
for its absence. I'd then reversed the order of roping,
rear-to-front and neck-to-waist, such that the person in the rear –
I'd also given him three pokes for each kidney – now had a
neck-rope also, with only the person in front not having a rope for
his neck of that type, as there was no person in front
of him.

He had one going
the other way, however, and all save those in the very front and rear
of the column had two neck-ropes, one going to the person in front
and another to the rear.

Between these two
poles of treason, each of the now-hobbled survivors was linked
neck-to-waist. I had had no leg-irons handy, else I would have used
those as well.

I was going to
march them out back. There, I would resume my questioning of them.

“Left hand gripping the shoulder of
the wretch in front of you,” I shouted. “Synchronize your
breathing and your feet, then march! For-hard, Huargh!”

I went to the door of the office and
opened it, sword in hand; and as they filed out slowly and gingerly,
I yelled, “you stinking whores, lift those damned-to-hell
feet up past your accursed waists, and then pound them into
the floor so that I can hear them bleed! I want to you to
shake these walls as you pound your feet into this floor, curse your
damned eyes!”

While their feet lifted slightly
higher, and a semblance of rhythm began to rustle among them, I saw a
slight problem beyond the obvious: the traitor at the front of the
column had nothing to do with his left arm. That needed
addressing.

“Hang out that left claw, you
accursed snake-spawn of a witch!” I screamed. “Clutch that
familiar spirit's left shoulder like the talons of a black rooster!”

That person did as instructed, though
feebly. I then recalled the usual way marching was supposedly done
where I came from: counting cadence, and the pacing of the marchers
done in time to it. That was the answer, and I began yelling it at
the top of my lungs:

“Left! Left! Left-Right-Left!”
I paused, then I yelled, “Curse you, you idiots! Hope on those
damned-to-hell left hooves when I tell you 'Left' twice in a row!”

I stalked up and down the column, its
moving slow, the feet still shuffling, the rhythm ragged and
clumsy-sounding. In my mind, each slammed-into-the-floor pace was to
sound like thunder, and the rhythm of marching was to have the
machine-like precision of a group of robots running the same exact
program in perfect synchronization: feet, breath, everything –
even the beat of their failing hearts – all were to beat as one,
fully as much as if no individuals existed anymore, but they had all
merged their souls and bodies into a machine.

“And as the war-machine keeps
turning,” I thought. The recollection was impossible to ignore,
for I was speaking from memory. “That has
to be in that black book somewhere.”

This distraction
sufficed to point out to me the lagging person in the middle of the
column. He was the gear with the broken tooth; the dirty bearing;
the worn linkage: in short, he was the problem, and the whole
machine therefore needed to be taken down and then thoroughly
'overhauled'.

He was dragging
his feet, this ever so slightly.

I did not tolerate such rank rebellion
among those I was 'educating', and I came to him, pirouetted
and leaped, then threw a roundhouse kick to the side of his head that
flung him such that his ropes went taut, then stretched to near the
breaking point – and the whole column toppled to the left like a
row of dominoes amid a forest of choking and gagging sounds.

I then began to kick them, my blows
landing wildly, until they were onto their feet once more. Once I
had them all standing – their eyes glazed, their tongues hanging
out, choking noises from nearly all of them, I screamed, sword again
clenched in my white-knuckled grip: “out, damn your eyes! Out!
Move, you cursed swine, out! Run, damn you all to hell, or I will
cut you up more!”

The mob attempted to run, and choked
themselves yet more until they formed up in column, where their
thrashing feet reminded me of mules attempting to gallop away from
the coach they were hitched to. As this occurred, I realized the
following: while they were still altogether unbroken regarding
delivering up useful answers to my questions as of yet, they
were very much broken regarding expecting anything close
to mercy at my hands, much less anything close to 'common-sense'
behavior. I could smell the fear boiling off of them, and its
sheer intensity gave me thoughts of using that very emotion against
them.

I shot into a leaping run after the
last in line and caught up with him nearly instantly, then grabbed
him by the hair with my left hand as I put my foot down. While still
gripping his hair in a death-grip, I leaped straight up – and kneed
him in the spine with my left knee. I heard his strangled
wheeze as his neck-rope cinched down tight to strangle him, then
somehow I managed to stay airborne – and then pirouette in
midair, then knee him in the gut with the right knee.

He screamed like a damned soul being
throttled by the tail of Brimstone, and the others echoed his
half-strangled screaming as they fell to the ground one at a time
over the next two seconds.

And upon seeing this happen, something
inside of me 'snapped' like a dirty glass rod: mere 'fear' was not
enough.

I wanted more, much
more, so verymuch more –
and I would do anything to make it happen.

I wanted terror, terror so
total that I was now completely mindless with rage, and with but one
single goal in mind – achieving a state of totaland
overwhelmingterror – I tossed every shred of reason I
had remaining unto me and sought with all I had to get that very
thing.

I began beating them as if crazed, and
this with my hands and feet alone.

Within seconds, I knew that I had had
a vast gulf of rage remaining inside of me, and heretofore I had been
far beyond kind and gentle with these people.
Now that collection of niceties was completely gone, and as
bone after bone cracked under the relentless pounding that I
delivered for nearly three sweaty speed-blurred minutes without an
instant's letup, the column then once more took its feet such that I
had a measure of
satisfaction.

A modest one, anyway.

They were but halfway across the main
hallway of the first floor, and nearly forty yards from the
east-facing main door of the house proper; they were now facing duewest; they were marching in the manner of fifth kingdom
slaves...

And they were marching backwards, each
foot-pounding step crackling like thunder as all of their feet rose
to several inches past their waists and then those bleeding
feet smashed as hard as possible into the stones of the floor, then
their other bloody feet repeated the identical process – and all of
this, including the hopping backward on the left feet twice as
per my orders, was done in time to my shouted cadence.

The previous wall of 'monolithic
obdurate resistance' was now beginning to crumble, just like the hall
had crumbled under the barrage of flung
artillery-shell-cum-wine-bottles prior to being blown to hell and
gone by the two 'big-bombs' and the remaining liquid-filled bottles
piled between them. The majority of these people, however, were not
silent; they were whining, weeping tearfully, and moaning. Those not
making such noises were 'sucking wind' – and on the verge of
strangulation due to the tightness of those neck-ropes I had
fashioned for them.

I kept up the screamed cadence, now
waving my sword as if it were a 'swagger stick', glaring at these
wretches angrily without cease, and as they passed out into the late
afternoon sunshine and down the steps, and from thence to under the
first of the trees – I cursed at them and poked several with my
sword when the people in question looked as if they were going to
trip up the column while going down the stairs. This was such that
when I screamed “Halt!”, this well under the trees, one of them
near the middle of the column – one of the chiefest of the accursed
whiners, in fact – moaned this tripe after sniveling for a
second or so:

“P-please, s-spare me,” he moaned.
“Have mercy...”

I had no idea as to what to do with
such an utterly stupid and foolish request, save for
one thing: do the precise and exact opposite of what he had asked.

It was time for another object
lesson, and he had chosen himself by his contemptible whining to be
the object of my lesson.

I walked to this man, sheathing my
sword as I did so. Out came the knife, its three inches of too short
blade now bright once more and glinting with oil; and I grabbed his
right shoulder with my left hand while I sank the knife into his gut
at the lower left corner of his abdomen. His screaming, those times
before seemingly muted in comparison, now took on a new level as to
pitch and volume, one I had not yet heard among any of these
men. I turned loose of my knife, leaving it clenched by his
gut-wound, and then punched him full in the mouth – and with
now-bloodstained knuckles, I resumed sawing his guts open, each
stroke short, sharp, and jagged, like a slow-running saber-saw.

I was fully past caring now,
and that completely; I wanted these fools to be so terrified
of me, so terror-stricken, that they would genuinely – and
greatly – prefer Brimstone's company to mine.

I now reached the bottom of his rib
cage, then turned the blade to the left while I continued
jab-slicing. Blood was pouring from the cut, staining the ground,
the front of his lower body, my clothing, and my hand up to my elbow,
but I did not care any more about blood – his blood, or anyone
else's. At the right margin of his abdomen, I turned the corner with
my knife, still stab-cutting, slicing, ripping, tearing; then I began
to saw-cut downward. His screaming continued unabated, but as I
finished cutting this flap of his skin, his intestines suddenly piled
forward onto his boots; and as a reproach for so insulting me
by dumping his guts without me first commanding him to do so –
and that by the numbers;
there was a definite order to 'dumping your tripes', with each coil
of intestine, each organ, and the other offal common to witches
numbered explicitly in my mind, and they had to come out and fall to
the ground in that precise order – that I spat full at his
face as I turned loose of him. He collapsed then, and the other
roped-together witches fell down in a row, this slowly, one at a time
with choking noises, to give him company upon the ground.

And I laughed at him, my laugh high,
maniacal, and insane, as he thrashed in the slow-growing pool of his
own blood and offal; he splattered his neighbors with his blood and
body fluids as he thrashed. I had words for him once I had finished
laughing at his plight.

“You” – here, I meant the
slow-thrashing wretch I had just cut open – “will rot in a tree,
fool, and be an object lesson for these others here.” This I said
in a high-pitched scream that echoed among the trees and seemed to
shake both the ground and their leaves. “I think these lessons on
the wages of sin need to begin with you, you scum-licking Babylonian
whore! Those lessons are these, you idiots:

“First, you shall die, and die
screaming, and die screaming as I kill you for my express pleasure,”
I snarled. “Secondly, you shall then be cast down to hell where
you belong, where the teeth of Brimstone shall gnaw you as his
choicest food for all of time; and finally, you shall be judged,
and that harshly, and the way of that Judge shall make you long –
with screams and shrieks of loving adoration – for the sensation of
my hands ripping you apart limb from limb!” My voice then regained
its high-pitched shrieking echo of a scream:

“Rope! Rope! Rope, the mean stuff,
and that swiftly!”

From somewhere to my left a large coil
of fearsomely spiky rope flew through the air to then land at my
feet, and I began tying them up, feet to neck as they lay upon the
ground, this in addition to their other bonds. For some reason, this
particular rope actually held my knots well; and when I had finished
tying them, I had words for their hearing.

“You shall speak when I
command you,” I growled in a brutally harsh-sounding voice. “You
shall give me my choicest desire, which is the information I wish in
the manner of my choosing; and I shall take it, and then I shall take
your lives. Regardless of what you do or say, however, you shall
die; your heads shall rot upon poles, their labels those of treason
and witchcraft, and that before God and man – in that order; your
bodies shall be dismembered, their pieces bagged, and those bags to
be labeled with treason and witchcraft also; and both heads and bags
shall be hung publicly, where the largest streets of the first
kingdom house cross each other, and they shall there remain,
untouched by the hands of man or the claws of beasts, until of their
own accord they shall fall to the ground in rotten fragments.”

A pause, then, “and now, this idiot
here shall instruct you fools as to the nature of your end.”

I kicked the still-alive man I had
disemboweled onto his side, and I re-tied his hands tightly behind
his back – as tight as I could – before cutting him free from the
mass of ropes tying him to the others. The remnant of that
most-recently arrived rope went about his feet, where I tied it
tightly in the shape of a hangman's noose. I had had decent luck
with those holding, unlike most other knots I had tied in the
recent past.

I dragged the man by that rope to the
trunk of the nearest tree, where the other witches could plainly see
him; then I tossed the free end of the rope over a branch about
twelve feet up from the ground. It came down to dangle at the height
of my face, where hand-over-hand, I began to haul him up. First, his
feet came up; then his waist; then his chest; and finally, he
finished, now screaming unceasingly, with his head hanging down three
feet from the ground and the ragged bloody mess of his intestines and
viscera hiding his face. Unlike those I had done the day before,
this man's viscera truly formed a 'red carpet', one that dripped with
blood; and as I tied the rope to the trunk of the tree using another
hangman's knot, I knew of but one last thing that I needed to
do to him.

“The curse of silence,” I
whispered, as I made ready with my hands and my knife. I was caked
with blood, and I now relished the sense of slow-clotting gore
covering my clothing and body. It made me a monster – and
witches feared monsters such as I. I almost wanted a horn to
blow, though I had no idea what kind of horns were the right ones.

The man's screaming abated for an
instant, and I acted: I slapped his gut-covered face until the blood
sprayed for tens of feet and covered my hands and arms anew up to my
elbows; then I reached in among his dangling guts until I found his
mouth. There, the pincers, these from my possible bag, came into
play, and I grasped his tongue with them and 'locked' them down hard.
I then plunged my knife-hand in amongst his viscera, then by feel, I
sliced open his right cheek, then sliced around with the knife while
pulling with the pincers until I had cut his tongue free. A quick
fling of of the knife to spray more blood onto the traitors, followed
by a wipe upon one of the traitor's clothing to clean it passably;
then it once more found my pocket.

I then drew my sword. Witches
respected swords, for those
were a matter of power
– and I had that now in full measure as I went to the first of the
roped-together witches with the blood-dripping fragment of meat in
the still-locked pincers.

“One bite each,
you accursed witches,” I snarled, “and one small bite only.”
A pause. “This is just the beginning of your education on
the wages of sin.” Another pause. “That education will
continue for all time in Hell after I am done teaching you fools
about such matters here.”

The first man began gnawing
tentatively, but when I poked him in the gut with my sword he bit
down savagely instead of screaming. I yanked the rest free with a
jerk that drew three teeth after it, then made him chew slowly and
thoroughly at sword-point before swallowing the tiny morsel of
'witch-tongue' he'd actually gotten. Once it was down and swallowed,
I repeated that same process with the next-in-line witch, sword at
the ready and screamed oaths as well; and after about ten minutes,
the tongue was gone, down to its smallest fragment; and each witch
had tasted his mouthful of blood-soaked flesh.

They were true-witches now: they had
eaten human flesh and tasted human blood, and therefore, they were
indeed witches – and more, with the consuming of the last
morsel, courtesy of my poking sword making more holes in their
guts, I had achieved an outcome at once surprising and difficult for
me to believe.

I had shattered their resolve, and
that completely; and now, they would give answers.

I called loudly in a slightly hoarse
voice for a writer, and as running steps came quickly from the door
of the house, I looked around. Here came Thomas, only instead of
chalk and a slate, he had a ledger and what might have been several
'pencils' ready-sharpened and a stool for his seat. He found a clean
place on the lawn, sat down, opened his ledger to a clean sheet, and
then looked at me, waiting as if for a signal of some kind. I had
his full attention, much as I now owned these witches as
surely as if I were indeed the chief arch-witch of the whole
continent and they were my property to do with as per my inclination
of the moment.

As I asked questions of them in a
casual voice, I began get answers, answers that were not merely
useful, but ones that I either suspected to be the truth before
asking the questions or knew beyond all doubt to be true the very
instant I heard them. The first one – this confirmed by multiple
replies – was that they had indeed been purchased, this with a
surprisingly hefty monthly stipend, one that most likely
doubled their house-paid – and non-trivial –
monetary income.

I rewarded this answer – and that
multitude which followed it in response to my questions – by using
the tools that had followed me by some strange means out into the
yard and under the trees.

I used the old-style carpenter's
hammers on bones, which splintered them into bloody ruin wherever I
happened to strike; I found an old awl, this of unusual length, and
poked holes in their lungs so as to give them 'sucking chest wounds';
I found an old saw, which I used to saw off fingers and toes, which
after amputating the appendages in question, I let the ragged stumps
bleed and made the amputees eat their own flesh without chewing like
the snakes they were; and now and then, I put aside all of these
commonplace things and drew my sword once more.

I removed larger things with it: hands
at times; other times feet; and more than a few times – more often,
in fact, than all else – I delicately sliced open the trousers of
the man in question, grabbed the man's 'organ' with the pincers –
and removed it and his testicles by raggedly slicing them off. This
usually caused terrible screaming, which I silenced by grasping the
bloody stump of what I had just removed, punching the person in the
mouth as hard as I could with my fist as I gripped the sword harder
than usually – and then ramming the still-dripping bloody penis
into the gasping hole that I had made with my blow, and then shoving
the bloody mess in up to the ragged-cut stump, such that the man's
cheeks bulged out like a hamster's from his own testicles.

Silence then was indeed golden, if
otherwise bloody; and I spoke of those whose mouths were thusly
plugged to be spiked with those plugs still in place, the explanation
given being this: “those witches had truly evil curses they wished
to say, and what I just did is the means of preventing them
from speaking those death-curses when they actually die.”

I then laughed maniacally at those who
were now sucking their own balls. I had promised to do that
exact thing, and I had kept my promise to the full; and now, those
people were indeed choking on their own 'weapons' – and with that,
I noted even more the following: the witches were broken; I had
broken them; and now, those few still able to talk – those few
knowing information yet unspoken – were delivering up to me that
which was mine to take when and as I chose, that being the
information I wished and then their lives.

Most of all, I was 'getting results'.
I knew a fair number of 'old hares' both living and dead would
thoroughly approve of what I was doing, and as the screamed truth
of the third degree session – this was one of those affairs,
one of those bloody horrors the Teacher of Guards had but hinted
about – filled page after page in the ledger, I was alert for
repeated information. When I started to hear repeated dates, times
and places from those still able to talk, I cleaned my sword as well
as I could upon what portions of their clothing that was not
bloodstained, then sheathed it – and drew out my knife.

That one man I had hung by his feet
had been the beginning of my 'gut-slitting'. I began to cut more
of them open in the precise same manner, and after the fourth witch
was cut open and his guts lay mounded upon his face and chest where I
had piled them with my blood-dripping hands, I started to hear new
information from those three witches still able to speak, this of a
truly surprising
nature:

A cove, this
'somewhere to the east' and just off of the Main river, complete with
a smaller Norden-ship and a sizable well-used camp filled with Spams
tinned and otherwise.

The actual 'date'
of the black-clothed ringleader's arrival – nearly a year before my
own coming, and he was indeed, by all accounts, not merely a Thinker,
but an especially selected man of considerable experience and
training. More, Ultima Thule had sent him her-own-self for this
particular job, which told me something about her own
priorities and where she thought her chiefest danger lay.

The rites of
Norden's witches – it seemed that those people actually did come to
the mainland with some frequency, there to do things far too bizarre
to describe readily – they were quite secretive, according to the
three I was questioning – but otherwise thought to be most
effectual in motivating their forces both domestic and foreign

Idols, these being
of metal, wood, stone and clay, and of both foreign and domestic
manufacture. One of the nearest domestic idol-manufacturing places
was a certain well-known volcano in the area, and its inhabitants did
much business that way. They did many other things
desired by witchdom, but these people knew nothing about those
activities, even if they did know the place made idols in some
quantity. Otherwise, 'idol-making' was a cottage industry in some of
the more-impoverished witch-held regions to the north – and that
part of the country could pass for the 'worst' sections of the second
kingdom in places regarding what witches could and did routinely do.

Their 'coven' –
not much as witches; there were no bones involved – but witches
they surely were, and that for everyone taking part in the plot, both
foreign and domestic. That Thinker was the nominal coven-leader;
while the true leader, of course, was a witch imported specially from
Norden for the task and tasked for that job by Ultima Thule
her-own-self. The witch in question came periodically to preside
over 'coven-meetings', and the Thinker interpreted her speech when
that was possible.

I had the
impression that much, if not most of her speech, however, was sundry
rune-curses – and that man was ignorant of those. Thinkers
didn't do anything with curses, and that by Ultima Thule's own
especial edict.

Their longing for
the flavorful flesh of swine and squabs, and their gross and
crude-spoken profanity-laced irritation that such 'tasty viands' were
now beyond their capacity to acquire; and not merely because of their
fifty-fold increase in price when they could be found.
Such foods were now genuinely difficult to get – regardless of
price – unless one knew the right people and wanted to travel
an entire day at a hard pace to where they could be prepared
and consumed; wait a day or perhaps two for the smell to dissipate
enough to travel safely out of those near-uninhabited regions; then
head back into 'the heart of darkness' once more at the same
horse-laming pace – and these people did not get that kind
of time off, either from their nominal jobs or their secret
duties.

The two activities
convolved left them with very little free time, so much so that only
by living in the house could they do both jobs.

Their 'love' for
the witch-queen of Norden, and their wholeheartedly desire for our
complete and total destruction as a people.

And finally, their
willing and self-chosen bondage to her, each one of them,
individually and collectively, as her true and boughten fully-owned
witch-slaves.

“That term is
real, then,” I thought. It seemed far too 'unreal' to be
true, but it was indeed true; and the precise words I had once
heard were now spoken and confirmed several times in my hearing.
More, hearing such confirmed the entire hyper-dominant master-slave
relationship common to witchdom: one was either a master or a slave,
depending on one's companions and circumstances. The goal of the
entire arrangement was total, complete, and unrelenting control by
those who were one's betters – and to become such a being
necessitated all manner of evil behavior. Murder was a given, but
there was much more to climbing in the witch-world beyond killing.
How much more, and what those activities were, was a matter these
people had had little idea of. They were near the very bottom
of the witch-ladder, even if they'd been told otherwise by those
above them.

The impression I
had gotten by this time was “they've been told enough for them to
do their jobs and not much more, save if such knowledge helped them
along the path that Thinker laid out for them. Otherwise, they know
what they've seen and heard in the process of being involved in some
of Norden's more-secret doings in this area – and witches, both
imported and domestic, tend to be secretive wretches when and
where they can.”

But a short time later, I knew: I had
all taken all the information that they had to give. All that
was left remaining to them were their lives; and as I drew my sword
after cleaning my knife as well as I could, I knew the remaining part
I had to play with these men: take their heads, then pile the severed
heads into as neat a mound as I could manage. That portion had an
odd importance, and beyond that, I understood little. The bodies I
would cut up...

“No,” I thought, as I swung on the
first neck and kicked the head out of the way as the blood poured out
in a rapidly diminishing gush of redness. I didn't have time for
that; certainly not right now. I knew who did, however:

“Those two 'guards': let them cut up
all of these bodies into pieces, these no larger in size than a man's
hand, and that done using an ax or sword; let them bag the body parts
of each body, leaving no choice morsels behind, and keeping the body
parts entirely separate to each such bag; let them tie up the bags,
and affix the labels; and finally, let them, under gun-toting
supervision, actually plant the accursed heads and body-bags in the
center of each street-crossing in the house such that the stink of
death fills the entire whole of the city.”

“Who would these two people be?”
asked Thomas. I then realized I had actually been speaking aloud,
and while doing so, I had sliced off three more heads. More than a
dozen remained, and that did not include those dead who had been
brought out without my noticing it. They would be decapitated also –
and every witch on the premises, that Thinker included, would be cut
up and bagged to hang and rot at every possible crossroads in the
kingdom house.

“Those wretches who failed at their
posts today,” I muttered, as I swung on another head. “They
failed God, they failed Hendrik, they failed Maria, and they failed
the rest of us by not performing to the utmost of their capacity.”

“That isn't much with those
two,” said Thomas. “I almost wish they'd been among those who
had died when you took the first Koenraad's head.” I heard
writing, then “still, doing what you said might salvage them to a
certain degree.”

“Yes, if that work I spoke of is
done without stopping for food, drink, rest, visits to the privy, or
sleep until it is completed to the uttermost degree,” I muttered.
“If it takes them an unceasing three days to do the whole of that
work, then let it take three entire days; and if they cease from
their labors before the job is done in its entirety, and that for any
reason whatsoever, cut them down on the spot and add their
heads and chopped-to-pieces bodies to those of these stinking
traitors. I'm finished with those two, and were they present,
I'd” – here, I removed another head – “I'd chop them up into
pie-filling right here and right now, and that while they still lived
to cheer me up with their screams for mercy.”

“I have think they've left the
premises, actually,” said Thomas, “and if I know some
people, they'd best not think to head homeward, but rather out
of the kingdom entirely.”

“So I just wrote,” said Thomas, as
I swung on another traitor's neck and sent his head flying. “I'll
see that those instructions get into the right hands.”

As I swung on another neck, I knew
that I had just ordered that those two be killed on sight if they
were seen anywhere in the first kingdom – and that, I noted
with grim satisfaction. I swung on another neck; but another few
left to kill of this batch, then decapitate those who had died
earlier – and then to make a 'monument' of sorts to my savagery.

Not that I needed such recognition,
nor that I wanted it; but I now realized I needed to add to my
'reputation' when and as I could. Such doings would have some
modest effect upon the influx of witches, and a substantially greater
effect upon those not witches. I came to the last of the
roped-together traitors, and as I turned his body over just so that
he could see his death approaching, I saw that his eyes were locked
in the rictus of death; and terror, like that of all the others I had
just killed, was writ plain and large upon his features.

I swung on him anyway,
then as quickly as I could, I decapitated the remaining bodies.
I had work to do, this being getting cleaned up enough that Jaak
would hopefully endure me and my weapons would not corrode; and then,
gather enough of a party – hopefully, a competent party –
to run down the other portion of this accursed plot and put an end to
them and their ways.

Yet now, there was the monument that
needed building, or the 'samadh' as someone in my recollection
had once called such things; and using the long and lank blood-caked
hair of each severed head, I carefully stacked the heads into a
somewhat sloppy mound. I paid the sensation of my blood-caked skin
no mind, and the same for my blood-clotted clothing; this was War,
and the Hare spread dirt where it willed when it roared past like an
explosion and left coughing and spitting filth-caked veterans in its
wake.

And the emerald color of the grass
below my feet, once the color of spring, was now stained a deep and
darksome shade of red, the color of butchery, of raw meat, of death,
and of destruction; and this redness was omnipresent, piled thickly
in places where the blood had piled slowly while it was clotting; and
gobbets of raw meat littered the ground as well as the slow-drying
blood.

“Is that vinegar I smell?” I
thought, as I sniffed out the familiar reek. Thomas had gone, and so
had his stool and ledger; and in their place, I saw a large and
steaming bucket, from whence that odor was coming. I went to it, and
before I did aught else, I cleaned every weapon I had of blood, and
that with utmost care. Those were to have attention before my skin,
my clothing, and even my life; and once those were thoroughly clean
and properly oiled, in place, ready to use once more – I began to
clean, with all possible speed, as much blood as I could from skin
and clothing.

“Best do as good a job as I can,
while not wasting time,” I thought, as I soaked my hair and shirt
with the steaming liquid from a 'rag-hunk'. “That stink will alert
the enemy, even more than it will bother Jaak.”

The water was becoming the thickness
and consistency of blood by the time I was finished, but the stink of
blood was hidden by the reek of vinegar, which sufficed. I turned to
see three people, only one of which of whom I knew by name, looking
over the 'samadh' I had stacked and the dark and bloodied ground that
surrounded it for some distance in all directions. I'd left the
headless bodies lay, as the dismemberment of the dead could wait upon
the decease of the still-living enemy to the east.

“Well,” I said in a
'business-like' fashion, “we need to go find that cove and deal
with the rest of them.” A pause, then, “the huntsmen? Where are
they? We need to hurry.”

Two of the three shot off toward the
house as if their trousers were burning, while the one that remained
behind proved to be Karl. I wondered if what I had done had gotten
to him.

He pointed to the feebly-thrashing
body I had hung in the tree, and said, “I never thought I would see
such a thing.”

“Old tales?” I asked, as I began
walking with him toward the house's entrance. The people and things
we needed were in there.

“That is like seeing one of them,
not hearing about it from your grandfather,” said Karl, “and of
those I know of, that there is like seeing Charles' own work. He did
things like you did.”

I was going to ask about stacking
heads, when instead what came from my mouth was pent-up 'feelings' of
a truly unexpected sort: “I have hated traitors my entire
life, Karl, and betrayal, especially when it has been poured out upon
you like water when you are a small child, hurts more than any and
all words that exist can speak of.”

I needed to pause here, for I could
'feel' the effects of the other two people as they began to speak to
those yet in the house proper. To say they had 'started something'
was an understatement, which made me wonder: why was Hendrik outside
of room 67? Where was Maria? Who had spoken the word 'keyhole' and
relieved those two 'guards' such that they could leave the building?
That made my next comment audible.

“They left the building,” I
muttered.

“Who is this?” asked Karl.

“Those two, uh, guards,” I said.
“They failed once more, and that puts a death-warrant upon them
over and above what I asked for, unless I miss my guess.” It
brought me back to my former point. “When traitors betray you as a
small child, one of two things happens to you: you either become one
yourself and all you do is treason until you join the king of
traitors in hell where you belong, or you do all that you
possibly can to not let others be hurt by such people.”

Karl looked at me, then shook his head
as we climbed the steps and went inside.

“Did I say something wrong?” I
asked.

“No,” said Karl. “Those who
abuse children so burn as witches, and those two you spoke of will
burn as witches, or my name is not Karl. I will kill them myself
should I see them, no matter the place or the time, and I will tell
Mathias when I see him who they are.”

To my surprise, the first person I
encountered was Hendrik, and he seemed embarrassed. “I have no
idea how I missed those two people, but they surprised me
completely when they left about a glass's turn after you had them
escort us to your room.”

“Missed?” I asked. In my
mind, they were now traitors indeed; one did not leave
one's post, especially in an emergency.

“I did not bring them down” said
Hendrik. “Perhaps it was more than surprise, as the shot I have,
while it is decent shot, is a trifle on the small size. It's
more for quolls and things like them than thugs.”

“Maria?” I asked,

Is safe,” said Hendrik. “She has
her weapons, and Sarah is in there with her with those guard-muskets
handy – and while Sarah is not a guard, I trust her nearly as much
as I trust you yourself, and I know she can fight.” I had
the impression Hendrik knew of this more than by 'gossip' – though
Anna's speech regarding what she'd seen and done after that one
affair wasn't in the same class as the usual hearsay. Besides, he
could always ask about what it was like to shoot a roer at a
'hard-witch', or blow up a dynamite-laden coach at a range of less
than thirty feet.

“The guard-muskets?” I asked. I
was glad they'd left them behind, as now Sarah was 'armed'. “They
didn't take those, as they would be then known to be thieves,
and weapons like those are uncommon enough in this area to
identify them readily as such.”

Hendrik again shook his head. “They
left those behind also. Only when Andreas came a short time later
and spoke the password did we know it was safe enough to come back
out.” Hendrik's tone then changed into something that I expected
him to have after the perfidy of those two 'guards'.

“They won't have homes to go home
to,” he spat. “They're outlawed to the ultimate degree now, and
I've sent word by messenger to Tam to see to both them and their
families.”

A
pause, this of several seconds. Two men were but a short distance
away, and seemed to be getting ready for 'something'. I'd never seen
them before, even if their bows and arrows – and clothing, this
being the closest thing to forest camouflage I had yet seen here,
more so than my normal clothing – gave me a decent idea as
to who they might be. I had to ask Hendrik a question, though; as to
ride with us would cement his own
reputation, and that would be worth a vast
amount in the months to come. He would become 'hard' as well as
'tough' in the minds of those who knew him – and in certain circles
to the south, that counted for a great
deal, possibly far
more than he currently realized.

“Are
you up to a longish ride?” I asked.

“Yes, but with whom?” he asked.
“I'm not much with a bow.”

“I'm passable with one,” I said.
“Then, there are those two men over there, which I presume to be
the huntsmen you mentioned.”

“A third man is getting his things
ready,” said Hendrik. “He should come shortly.

“So we have you – bad shot or no,
it's important that you yourself go on this one, as that's going to
help a lot in
the months to come when dealing with the other kingdoms – those
three, me...” A pause. “We need a few more, but only
a few. Ideally, we need between six and ten people in total: six
being the minimum needed to shoot down those thugs fast enough that
we don't end up getting killed should they rush us or decide to shoot
back, and more than ten would make enough noise for them to learn of
our presence too soon.” I paused, then said, “it's important
that they all be quiet, also.”

“It will have to be Gabriel for one
of them, then,” said Hendrik. I heard obvious misgivings in his
voice, so much so that I wondered why he was mentioned. While
Gabriel had gone south on the trip, much of the way back he'd caused
enough trouble that he'd almost gotten us all killed – and on top
of that, his tendency toward 'oblivion' was as much evident lately as
it had ever been.

“Does he know how to use a bow?”
This my bare-whispered question.

“He does, but only about as well as
I do,” said Hendrik. “More, both of those bows and arrows we
received in the fourth kingdom are stored in his office.”

“Why, other than that 'closet'
called the museum is getting crowded and they're readily accessible
in there – oh, and his office is fairly safe now, now that Generals
and their supplicants are scarce?”

Hendrik looked at me with open mouth
and surprise writ upon his face, and nodded.

“And we cannot use Kees,” I
murmured. “It seems he has trouble not merely with guns, but
also...”

“Kees has trouble with anything
resembling a weapon, save
perhaps a smaller club suitable for rats,” said Hendrik. “He's
best kept busy in his office inking documents, as he does that
extremely well – and
we're doing that more now than since I took office a few years ago.
A lot more, actually.”

“Not just mail,”
I said. “Documents you plan on archiving, also, as ink gives them
an added permanence and drastically improves their legibility.” A
pause, then, “everything in those ledgers that you have is inked if
it's legible, correct? Especially if it's an older document?”

Hendrik nodded,
now surprised that I had figured that matter out. I then had an idea
as to who might be sufficient to 'round out' our party and give it
sufficient 'firepower'. Karl was doing a 'double shift, so he wasn't
available – and he'd proven to be worse than 'awful' when using a
bow, but I'd heard some few rumors about the very latest crop of
guards.

Some of those
people could shoot bows passably at the least. They'd had to stay
fed somehow during their year and more of living 'alone' in
the woods.

“Perhaps two of those newest
guards?” I asked. “They might be quiet enough in the woods, but
then again...” I was thinking, “if we use them,
I want the two that went to the hall's nonsense. They'll not back
down if those people try for us.”

“I'm not sure
about them, unless they were among the handful of that second class
that took part in the hall's destruction,” said Hendrik. “They're
otherwise untried, and Norden's people are involved.”

Those two that I had thinking of
proved unavailable; they were elsewhere, most likely in town fetching
things they needed to set up housekeeping. Given that they had
nowhere else to live, I wasn't surprised much; and with further
reports, these by runner, the other results came in: nearly everyone,
save for those either on duty or who were going to be on duty during
the next posting, were 'elsewhere', save for two people of that
newest class.

Like those two now marked for death –
that was a given now; they were judged to be traitors of a sort –
these people had not gone to wreck the hall. However, unlike
those who had 'run off', they had not 'begged off' or found 'excuses'
– they had been 'working' at the house proper that evening on post
with an older guard; more, they had wanted to go, and that badly.

“At least they're available, and
they are willing to go –
and they can go right now, not 'later',” I thought. “They've
spent over a year dodging witches in the woods, so they should
know how to be quiet.”

The preparations
continued; and as part of them, I went toward Gabriel's office. I
suspected he was at work upon documents of a sort himself, and when
he came to the door in response to my tapping, he was but one of a
few in the house who had not stared at me.

I had ignored such
staring; I had a job to do, and it was but part-finished; more, those
remaining might escape if we did not hurry. I could feel some of the
other traitors, these being the well-hid and raggedly-clothed
'watchers' for our boughten traitors; and while they were on foot,
they were neither slow nor laggardly in their efforts. We
needed to beat them, and that by at least an hour.

A sleeping camp –
or one unaware of our presence – would make for easier
extermination.

However, when Gabriel showed – he
was indeed working on a document – he proved to have 'dug out' both
bows and those arrows we had received, and it took him but minutes to
douse his lights – two student's lanterns with wax candles – cork
his ink-vial; he was speaking of 'ink' when he did this – and then,
after handing me the pair of fourth kingdom bows and the sizable
pouch of arrows, he closed and 'keyed' his door.

I then saw the small silver ring on
the side of one of the bows, and as I looked at it, I noted that it
did not show the marks of either filing or buffing. “Someone
machined this thing, or at least portions of the wax portion of the
mold,” I thought, “and they used my ideas of quick-detach locking
fittings.” I wondered if Gabriel knew of the recent happenings.

“There were traitors,” I said,
“and... I wanted to say, “I made a horrible stinking mess!”

“What I was
copying down in there were some of the notes from that session,”
said Gabriel, “as we need multiple copies, and our printing setup
is entirely fit for scrapping. Kees will ink them once I finish
writing out the three or four copies needed.”

“Forms in
triplicate,” I thought. Time was a-wasting, and we needed to go.

“One
for general use here,” he said as he walked with me to where the
others were yet gathering near the juncture of entrance hallway and
main 'court', “one to send south by special
courier, and one for the archives – and possibly one for you,
though I suspect a writing dowel's marks will suffice for that one,
provided it's kept sharp.” A brief pause, then, “if a person in
this house does not now know of what happened, he is either blind,
deaf, or was dead to the world, for the noise and the smell has
traveled far – and I fully agree with what was written about
witches being traitors to God and man.”

“Written?” I
asked. I barely recalled what I had spoken of, other than
that information I needed to know in order to find the cove. It was
somewhere to the east, it was just off of the Main, it was sizable
and fairly well hidden, and its people were within days of sailing
downstream, this presuming Hendrik had been eliminated and all in the
house had been put to the sword by the contingent of spams who were
to come during the night after the plot had succeeded. That one
Thinker had planned on picking a horse out of those in the horse-barn
and riding the thing to death at a hard-flogged gallop in the process
of returning to his waiting 'assault group' at or near this
particular cove.

“We need to hurry now,” I said to
the group as I passed through them and walked rapidly toward the
entrance. “I do not wish them to get away.”

The horses proved to be gathered
outside next to the hitching rail, save for Jaak; he was waiting, his
'saddle-cloth' in his mouth, and as I shook it out and mounted, I
wondered if he would endure me. The first impression I got was “you
smell like really bad sour wine mingled with blood.”

“Sorry, can't be helped right now,”
I thought. I then 'showed' what I had been forced to do. My
preference for mere 'bluff' had been called in great measure, and
these people had needed an entire 'straight out of an old tale' third
degree session to give up what they knew.

I was surprised greatly they had not
merely told whatever they could to make the torture stop, until I
realized one thing: unlike the semi-mythical tormentors of my
world, I could tell – usually fairly clearly at the least, if not
with absolute precision – if I was hearing lies and other
such drivel; and I dealt with such 'lying' viciously upon hearing it.
When I heard truth – I
could tell when I heard that,
also, chiefly as I commonly had impressions as to what the truth was
before I asked questions regarding it – I was a good deal
less vicious in my
punishments; and I was after the precise and exact
truth, and I would stop at nothing to get it.

These people had learned that
relatively early. What they did not know – until I had broken them
completely – was just how far
I was willing to go to rip the truth out of them, and that in all
of its gory detail.

Just like an old horn-blowing
'monster', one of them who blew horns and lived to kill evildoers.

Under the west end of the trees, this
in the shadow of the boatwright's shop, the horses were now gathered
with us mounted while I gave some small indications of what needed to
be done next. I had made the mess – I was thinking of it in
those precise terms – somewhere further into the trees, not
at their edge. I tried hard to recall that portion of what I heard
as to where that Norden-ship had actually sheltered. The traitors
not been terribly specific, and I suspected they had never been near
the place, or for that matter, told where it actually was.
I'd have to find it myself, which I spoke of.

“Compartmentalization,” I thought.
It was a familiar concept to me at least. “Tell them what they
need to know, and enough more of a non-related nature to overcome all
of their 'programming' to do otherwise, and no more.”

That did sound likely; and that,
coming from the mind of one of Norden's thinkers, made for a chilling
thought: those people knew what
they were doing, and that in multiple
senses. Once more, I had underestimated their capacity, and that
badly. Norden not merely outnumbered us by a factor of ten to one,
and their people were more capable than all save our very best if we
had to resort to edged weapons; they also could readily
out-think us, and that with half their brains tied behind their
backs.

“Yes, if you get
one of their verybest people,” said the soft voice,
“and that man was one of them. Norden took a serious hit
from his loss that they're not going to recover from.”

“As in Norden's
Von Moltke?” I said. “Their premier military strategist, or at
least someone in that league?”

“Not much less,”
said the soft voice, “and the next best person they have is not
even close to being as good at his work.”

“Not even that,”
said the soft voice. “Ultima Thule forbade him from making notes
of any kind regarding her master plan for the continent, so such
plans died when you removed his head.”

I then spoke of
what kind of concealment we would need, and more, why: in the
slow-gathering dusk, I would need to lead the column quickly and in
and among cover as much as I could so as to dodge the quick-running
witch-messengers coming to the Spam-camp with the dire news.

“They chose the Main river,” I
said as we left by the front gate, “because it is closer, more
readily passed at this time, and it has a number of shaded and
protective coves within a reasonable distance. More, unlike most
such camps, this one has been present, well-hid, since the ice broke
up in that river and they sailed under darkness up the river and into
it.”

“Why did they stay so long?” asked
one of the new guards. He was was 'hot for the matter', if otherwise
green. I'd been told that was a commonplace attitude among our
newest people.

“Because few visit the Main's
coves,” said Hendrik, “and they are ripe places to hide. More, I
suspect this place has been used by them before.”

“Yes, many times,” I said. “We
will see their markings upon the trees when we get there, if not a
death-pole or three,” I said. “The river's dropping, so they'll
need to leave soon regardless, even with their boat.”

“Not a regular war-ship?” asked
Hendrik, as I led east while staying but feet from the house's
hedges. I was glad for my compass, as a short distance beyond where
we now were was unfamiliar country to me, and I wanted to stay either
close by trees or actually in
the trees as much as I could. The fleeing couriers would keep to the
paths, thinking little beyond the obvious and familiar, as was the
usual for those living here. I had a question, though.

“Do any of you
know who that black-dressed wretch was?”
I asked.

“Your questions answered much, but
examination of his remains showed their accuracy,” said Hendrik.
“That person was from Norden, as his facial features matched
drawings of men taken near the third ditch.”

“One of those Thinkers, though?” I
asked. I wanted to say, “she keeps them
separate from the spams, and they're almost a different breed of
person from the usual people there.”

“The
similarities are unmistakable,” said Hendrik, “even if that man
was physically taller than any of those tinned thugs I've ever
seen, and he was a lot better fed, as well.” A pause, then, “and
then, there was his clothing.”

“The cloth might
have come from here,” I muttered, but all else...”

“It was not
sewn by someone like Sarah,” said Hendrik, “but done by a tailor
who sews the clothing of witches, and there are no such people in
this area.”

“Not now,
you mean,” I muttered. “There was one well-hid man in Roos...”

“No, not the
usual type of witch-tailor,” said Hendrik. “The cut of his
clothing was altogether different, which means a bones-carrying
witch-tailor having talent and skill not much less than that of your
wife-to-be – and there haven't been any such people in this
area since time out of mind.” A brief pause, then, “between Kees
and Freek, I found that one of the things they do up near the
north-tip is witch-clothing, and if you are a high-ranking and
wealthy arch-witch and want clothing that fits you especially well,
you take a trip up that way in your long-coach with your black-cloth
and your other supplies, and you abide near such people until you
have exactly what you wish – and you pay them in coin of
their choosing once you have it done to suit you.”

“And the
now-confirmed truth of that one report?” I asked.

“Two copies of
the original are in Kees' hands for inking, and this new information
will but add to it,” said Hendrik. “It more or less proves that
your 'untried assertions' that were thought in the second and
third kingdoms to be the product of 'excessive consumption of strong
drink' were indeed the precise truth, and that will get into
some of those people's minds and roost there for a while.”

“Yes, but not
the mind of the man running the second kingdom,” I spat. We were
now in truly unfamiliar country, nearly a mile east of the
house proper, and I knew even our low-pitched voices needed to cease
shortly. The cove in question was easily ten miles away from where
we currently were, and at our slow trot, we would come close to it
within an hour, even with my leading us around the edges of woodlots
and in some cases through them.

“We drilled
mostly to the north, not in this area,” I thought. “Those hikes
we did then were too stinking short. I want long ones, ones
made at quick-march over ugly terrain, with possible overnight
camping during the process.” I then recalled it was outside of the
one other truly familiar region to me, that being north and somewhat
to the west.

At least I had my compass and 'some'
directions, and while some behind me whispered of trails, Hendrik
silenced those whispering. He then said, in a dread whisper that
seemed to ring like echoes in our minds, “those runners will take
those. He's used to going across country. I've seen
him do it many times over
terrain worse than this while we were dodging enemies, and I've never
seen him go wrong.”

Such talk was a
help to my thinking, and as I led through the trees – the woodlots
here had conjoined themselves such that they were a near-impenetrable
band of trees, or so it seemed until I came to the front and began
leading, my compass checked frequently and otherwise wary for trouble
– I could feel where the place was to a degree. More, I
could also feel the presence of messengers in the general area, and
though these people were restricted to paths, our route through the
trees cut miles off of our distance compared to that of the paths.
Also, they were afoot; and finally, these raggedly-clothed 'beggars'
were not in especially good condition. They were walking far more
than they were running, even if their devotion to their task was
otherwise 'beyond fault' by the standards of witchdom.

“We'll beat
those people by hours,” I thought, as we came out of the trees and
began crossing a narrow meadow. Another group of trees was ahead,
and once in it, I began leading a trifle south. The place was that
way 'slightly'.

“About as far up
the Main as they could go and not ground that thing out,” I
thought. “Now is this a pilot ship, or is it an actual 'dragoon'
or whatever they call their war vessels?”

“Recall
how Norden's shipbuilding methods are changing?” said the soft
voice. “This is one of the first examples of a new type, even if
many of its construction-methods still reflect the old ways of
Norden's ship-halls – and while it is a little
smaller than the usual Norden-ship, it is not
a pilot-ship.”